KATHMANDU (UCAN) -- Catholic schools in Nepal continue to produce good results in the annual School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations, but the lay owner of a "successful" school wonders how much this really means.

Newer village schools continue to show that they are second to none, with Notre Dame School in Bandipur, 160 kilometers west of Kathmandu, having all of its class 10 students pass with first-division marks again this year.

The fourth graduating class continued the perfect record of the 14-year-old school founded by Japanese Notre Dame Sisters. A first-division pass means that a student scores 60 percent or higher in every test subject.

The Suryodaya school run by St. Joseph of Cluny Sisters in the eastern town of Damak also obtained a 100-percent passing rate.

Twenty-three of its 28 third-batch candidates obtained first-division passes and the rest second division passes. Apart from that, one of the boys, Jayakumar Rai, secured the highest marks in Jhapa district.

The traditional prestige schools in Kathmandu performed well as usual, with St. Mary's girls all passing, 137 of 143 with first-division marks, and all but one of the St. Xavier's boys passing, 97 out of 108 in the first division.

The two schools are run respectively by the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Mary Ward nuns, and the Jesuits.

The affiliated St. Mary's School in Pokhara, 210 kilometers west of Kathmandu, also scored 100 percent passes like last year.

However, the lay Catholic owner of a school that had all of its graduating students pass, almost all in the first division, expressed reservations.

"Marks and the SLC exams, where memory power perhaps plays too great a role, matter only so much to assess the young while they are growing up in this changing world," Jyoti Khanal, vice president of Caritas Nepal, told UCA News.

In the six Bhutanese refugee camps in Eastern Nepal for which Caritas Nepal and Jesuit Refugee Services provide primary and secondary education, 425 students took the SLC and 72.4 percent passed. Of the students who passed, 73 obtained first-division marks, 204 second-division and 31 third-division.

According to official results 139,202 students took the SLC exam nationwide this year. The passing rate was 49.2 percent, compared with 47.6 percent last year. Most of the top students were from private schools around Kathmandu.

At the main weekend Saturday Mass at Assumption Church in Kathmandu July 10, parishioners congratulated the some half-a-dozen local Catholic SLC graduates with applause.

The literacy rate in Nepal is about 40 percent, with boys twice as likely to be literate as girls.

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